Delighting in Work

Our work is a gift.  Sometimes wonderful and sometimes work.

I’ve found that anything worth doing requires some level of work.  In physics work is “the exertion of force overcoming resistance or producing molecular change.”  Resistance is required for change.  Work is not only the job we do each day.  It is that which we put into what we do.  It is what we put our hands to as well as the effort we put into it.  Change requires resistance.  I often want change without the resistance, yet that’s not how it works.  Or at least not with significant change.  If you feel resistance you just might be onto something.  Since we spend so much time in the work of our job or our role that is often where we feel the most resistance.  Yet that is also the very place that is our gift.  Your work is your gift and worth the resistance.  

“…Take care of yourself, have a good time, and make the most of whatever job you have for as long as God gives you life.  And that’s about it.  That’s the human lot.  Yes, we should make the most of what God gives, both the bounty and the capacity to enjoy it, accepting what’s given and delighting in the work.  It’s God’s gift!…”
Ecclesiastes 5:18-20 Message

Sometimes it’s hard to see work as a gift.  Yet here in Ecclesiastes that is exactly what Solomon is encouraging us to do.  In the midst of searching through life’s seeming meaninglessness Solomon finds that it is through God that we find meaning.  Apart from Him it all ends in meaninglessness.  God empowers us to enjoy His provision.  Knowing this he says that our work is God’s gift to us for us to delight in and make the most of it.  Some days that seems so easy to do and other days it can feel more like a stretch, yet all days it remains true.  Whatever the work of your day looks like today may you have “both the bounty and capacity to enjoy it, accepting what’s given and delighting in the work.”